1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the field of information handling system management, and more particularly to a system and method for information handling system storage device management information access.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Information handling systems process information through the cooperation of a number of different processing components. For example, a central processing unit (CPU) executes application instructions stored in volatile memory, such as DRAM. The application instructions are stored in non-volatile memory, such as a hard disk drive or solid state drive, which allows storage during powered down periods. A chipset with firmware instructions, such as a BIOS, transitions the processing components from a powered down state to an active state and then coordinates physical interactions between the processing components and Input/Output (I/O) devices. In some instances, a management processor monitors the operation of the processing components and provides management functions, such as remote power down and power up. For instance, server information handling systems often include a baseboard management controller that manages processing components through a management bus, such as an IPMI or I2C bus. Active management of processing components by a BMC or other system manager helps to efficiently use system resources by allocating power and cooling resources. For example, if the temperature within a server chassis becomes too great, a BMC can throttle the CPU to operate at a lower speed so that less heat is created. As another example, if the temperature within the chassis remains below thermal limits, the BMC can reduce cooling fan operation so that the information handling system runs more quietly.
In addition to active management of components through a management bus, many components include internal diagnostics systems that monitor component operations to detect and report component faults. One example of such internal diagnostics is the thermistors found in non-volatile storage devices, such as hard disk drives and solid state drives. Storage device thermistors log internal storage device temperatures and report the temperatures to a host through an internal log page or diagnostics page. Although the temperature information is provided to the host through the main storage device interface, such as a SATA interface, the command to obtain temperature information from a log page or diagnostics page are different from queued I/O commands that read and write data at the hard disk drive. In the case of SATA hard disk drives, when a command reads temperature information from a log page or diagnostics page, read and write commands must be aborted to perform the temperature data read. Occasionally aborting read and write commands does not have a significant impact on storage device I/O performance, however, frequent accesses to storage device internal log or diagnostics pages can have an impact on storage device performance. In one example embodiment, reading a temperature from a hard disk drive at five second intervals reduced I/O performance for reads and writes by as much as 40%.